Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Why, hello there! I know it's been ages! I picked up my Col-Erase literally for the first time in 2 years or so, it feels so good to be back on the desk though. I'm still in the tropical island for those who wonder. It's been more than 4 years and counting, which surprises me more than anyone else as I myself never thought of staying here for a such a long time. Noriko and I also got our first baby in October, and my daughter has been the best thing that ever happened to our life since then. Work has been great as well. I didn't really feel that I could ever call myself as a professional animator 3 years ago as I was so fresh out of school at that time. But now, with a huge help from the company, I feel more comfortable pronouncing my title as an animator more than ever.

Though I wasn't fully happy being here for all this time. As I become more comfortable animating for the client, the job became somewhat more task-like. I started to behave like a mindless robot to accomplish whatever is asked. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not unhappy being here either. Most of the time I get excited over my shots and cannot sleep at night thinking about it. Seeing the other animator's work also never stops entertaining me. It only happens when I get tired or simply burned out. Those shots eventually turned out to be great nonetheless, thanks to the awesome lead Cedric, but I always felt that I lost my initial drive somewhere.

I reckon that's partially due to the type of the shots that I do at work. My initial motivation to get into this animation industry was more for a character driven animation, but most of the work that I did here has been a pure vfx work except for the Rango stuff. Again, I'm excited to do those vfx shots as well, it just happened to be that my affection is leaning more towards to the character piece.

Lately I've been thinking of making my personal piece more seriously than ever, for my own satisfaction and/or for the possible future job opportunities. The fact is that once you start it, it's a lot easier to keep up with it! A lot of good old memories started to come back as well. I'm a keen reader of Walt Stanchfiled's book for all the sudden again!

I thought the year end holiday was a perfect time for me to think about the plans for the next few years, and so did I. Then there's this art themed podcast thing here. I completely forgot where I picked up from but it was on my Read It Later list, so I had a listen. Quite surprisingly the host was talking about the dos and don'ts on making a new year's resolution. What a perfect timing! I believe the show is quite entertaining apart from the fact the he is recording the podcast while he drives, so there's an awkward pause here and there. But anyway give it a try while you are still in the new year's mood.

Enough of my story. I hope you got your own resolution ready to begin a year. Happy New Year to all and see you in a bit.